Friday, April 30, 2010

I recently exercised my right as a law-abiding citizen and entered the world of local politics by attending a PACT meeting in Weymouth - the local plod's attempt to bring crime-fighting to communities.

I'm all for crime-fighting and I am giving some serious consideration to getting my own costume and sidekick (Lobsterman and Crab Boy, their powers being the result of a radioactive fish supper), so I trolled along to see if my ideas regarding crime and punishment tie up with those in so-called authority.

"What about people crapping in hedges?" I ask, as we move onto item 17 of the agenda: "People crapping in hedges near Lobsterman's secret lair"

"Law-abiding citizens cannot move for perps crapping in hedges," I reply, "It is not a victimless crime."

"And tell me," he said, turning the onus on myself and Crab Boy, the cunning devil, "What do you think we should be doing with these so-called criminals?"

"Simple: Tie 'em to a post at low tide and leave 'em for the crabs."

"Crabs, again."

"And what," I ask, drawing myself up to my full height despite the costume chaffing the private areas somewhat, "What is wrong with crab justice?"

"It's the same punishment you recommend for fly-tipping, speeding drivers, vagrants, overdue library books and old men in socks and sandals."

He fixed me with a gimlet stare and gave me both barrels: "We really don't think your plans are realistic - no court in the land will allow rows of naked, crab-eaten corpses at low water mark, not now, not ever. And it'd kill the tourist trade.

"And another thing: Get out."

Stupid pencil-necked desk pilots. What do they know about modern crime-fighting?

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Golf, if you did not know, is an enormously frustrating pastime with the highest fatality rate of any known sport.

With the bodies of the fallen piling high on the greens and fairways of golf clubs around the world, the Royal and Ancient have updated the otherwise set-in-stone Rules of Golf to reflect the changes in the modern game

Rule 35If a player shoots his opponent dead, he incurs an immediate two stroke penalty on the current hole

There is a further two stroke penalty if this occurs in a bunker and the player fails to rake the sand

In matchplay, should the player or his playing partner's ball strike the corpse, the current hole is deemed forfeit

If the ball should strike the corpse of another playing party, the player is entitled to a free drop at two clubs' length distance from the hazard, but no nearer the hole

If the corpse is lying on the green across the hole, choose another hole

There is no penalty for beating an opponent to death with one of the clubs in the golf bag, provided this occurs on the teeing ground before the player has made a stroke

Always play the corpse where it lies

Another recently introduced golf rule of which you might not be aware:

Rule 36If caught having sex with multiple mistresses, your opponent is given a free swing at your head while you attempt to flee in a car, followed by a six-month period of not playing golf

Still, we can make 19th hole double entendres until the cows come home

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Some of my colonial readers may have failed to notice there is an election campaign under way in the UK.

My employers - quite rightly - insist that I remain strictly neutral in matters political, so it is without comment that I draw your attention to the election leaflet that arrived through my door on Monday, appealing to the voters of Dorset South:

Wow. No, really: WOW.

The other side of the leaflet can be read HERE, in which it is revealed that the not-mad-at-all MAD Party's secret bunker is at the Swanage Pitch and Putt course.

And here, I believe, they are missing out on a unique selling-point. No other political party in this General Election can offer 18 holes of golf at the bargain price of just £6.50. Not even the Greens.

Frankly, the Labour, Conservative and LibDem election machines (and let's not forget the Greens and UKIPs who are also standing locally) have a lot of catching up to do on this little beauty.

Neutrality disclaimer: Other political parties are available, I neither publically support nor condemn any party's policies.

Monday, April 26, 2010

A few days ago, the good people of Twitter playfully laid all the world's ills squarely at the feet of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. After all, the tabloids had the knives out for the man, so he might as well cop it for everything else.

And frankly, this is an angry, angry world with far too many people spurting their unfocused rage all over the place. And to save the Clegg all this unnecessary worry whilst there's an election to be fought, I have decided to Man Up and take the rap for this little lot.

Feel free to blame me for anything you can think up in the comments section. If it's on the internet, it must be my fault, after all. No skin off my massive conk.

- Played Diego Maradona onside for his Hand of God goal against England in the 1986 World Cup - Moved Catholic priests to new parishes

- Keeps Heartbeat on ITV, the entire cast trapped in a 1969 Groundhog Day for the rest of their natural lives- Poured an entire bottle of Shake'n'Vac down the mouth of that Icelandic volcano

- Fathered John. But not Edward - Shot the deputy, after framing Bob Marley for sheriff's death

- Sunshine? Moonlight? Good times? Blame it on the Duck - Sold the idea of the Bracewell Ironsides to Winston Churchill

- Those "We Buy Any Car" adverts? Yeah, I'll buy anything- If you add some letters and take some away, "Scaryduck blog" is an anagram of "Al Qaeda rules UK"

- Got Peter Andre and Katie Price together. Then split them up. All for TEH LULZ- I created Comic Sans. And the blink tag. And the marquee tag. And animated gifs

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Last week, the best part of ten million people watched the main party leaders debate who should be the next Prime Minister last week, equally dazzled Cameron's big shiny head as they were repulsed by Brown's all-too-accurate impression of Jabba the Hutt.

I, on the other hand, sat out in the shed, where I dipped a stick in a pot of paint and watched, enraptured, as it dried.

There could – I thought – be a whole TV channel in this.

When there's nothing better on, switch over to the Paint Drying Channel and watch a variety of different shades and textures drying on walls, floors and – after 9pm – ladies in various states of undress.

On Paint Drying HD we might even go for a touch of creosote sinking into the hungry wooden slats of a fence as part of my ninja training.

And for a subscription, the hard stuff. Gloss. Radiator enamel. Tipp-ex. Highly-paid Premier League footballers paying someone to come round their lavishly-decorated 'crib' and paint the walls, only for their WAG to turn up from a hard day's shopping to complain that it is *just* the wrong shade of duck egg blue.

On second thoughts, I've had a better idea: The Line Premier League Footballers and their WAGS up against a wall and shoot them with a blunderbuss loaded with cattle turds because that would be aces Channel. I'd watch that.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

He might have a point, for it is nothing but a knife, a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, a ball-point pen, a torch, a key-ring and 64MB of memory. I mean: what can you do with 64MB these days? Bugger all, that's what.

"What it needs", he says, "is a few minor modifications, and you might not get laughed off the streets."

I am so cool, I've been laughed off the streets, all the way round the block and back onto the streets again, so I do not care.

So, after a few tweaks in the Scaryduck Jr Bedroom of Doom, my Swiss Army knife now comes with the following:

- Mobile phone with web access- Toothbrush- The actual Swiss Toni (Comes with a number of phrases such as "Whittling a tent peg with a Swiss Army knife is very much like making love to a beautiful woman")- The actual Swiss Army, each with a Swiss Army knife- Dog- My trusty frying pan of SPANG- 32MB of computer memory

I pushed the boy on this dreadful turn of events, for that is barely three minutes of video downloaded from certain websites.

"Dad - you've got to make sacrifices if you want to be a trend-setter. Trust me."

I SPANGed him with my trusty frying pan of SPANG and locked him in his room. Kids, eh?

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Some years ago, I made a dreadful mistake, over which I am truly ashamed.

I married that Duck fella.

I bought a Right Said Fred CD.

Yes, I know. It seemed a good idea at the time in an I'm-Too-Sexy-Deeply-Dippy kind of way, but through the years it has become a millstone around my neck, weighing down my very existence.

And the worst thing is this: I cannot - no matter how hard I try - get rid of it. Whenever I think it is out of my life, there it is, the lightly-oiled brothers Fairbrass and their meisterwerk, staring back at me.

- Ebay: No bids.- Car boot sale: The only thing we brought home after the savages of Yeovil ripped the very clothes from our backs.- Laughed out of Cash Convertors- Charity shop: Take it from me - I didn't even know they employed security guards

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Looking back at these pages over the last few weeks, it has suddenly struck me how much I've written about killing people who annoy me completely TO DEATH in a number of amusing, inventive yet thoroughly disturbing ways.

Clearly, I need to calm things down a bit.

So here's a picture of a cute baby koala, who, given half the chance, would eat your face right off, before surfing home to his mother on the back of your still-twitching corpse.

"The git who's in charge of those temporary traffic lights outside Porton Down. The ones that stay green for all of six seconds and leave you planning a his painful death as you sit for an hour with the charming view of the back end of a horse box."

"And you say you've ...err... got him?"

"Yeah, as I crawled past, there he was, tinkering about with the controls on the traffic lights, so I lured him closer with a tasty Pepperami, spanged him on the head with my trusty frying pan and bundled him in the boot of the car."

"Oh, good... err... I mean... Are you sure that's strictly legal?"

"100 per cent legit. We put him on trial, and he's going to be tied to a post at low tide at Weymouth Bay and left for the crabs. And when the Crustaceans of Righteous Justice have picked the flesh from his bones, we post him back to his mum and we won't even put a stamp on the parcel..."

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

"Yes, I am aware of the television programme, it being ITV's flagship crime drama in which people living in a Bermuda Triangle-sque area of the West Country are killed entirely to death in a number of increasingly unlikely methods, usually revolving around some otherwise mundane facet of country life, such as the village fete (savaged to death by the dog that looks most like its owner) or flower arranging (Venus Fly Trap up the cludger). What of it?"

"I am glad you explained that for the readers, because you know how the frenzied serial killer is always some previously mild-mannered villager tipped over thge edge by some minor slight, of which the victim or victims are often entirely ignorant?"

"Now you come to mention it, yes I do."

"Because, if my inbox is anything to be trusted, I see you have invited me to a series of six hour meetings over the next two weeks, in which we are to proof-read the phone book."

"Yes, that's correct. We can't have spelling errors in the phone book, the entire fabric of society may collapse."

"Be that as it may - how's the bell-ringing hobby of yours coming along? Those church bells must be really, really heavy..."

Monday, April 12, 2010

It's election time again, and my esteemed employers remind me that I should remain strictly neutral on matters political in the run up to the 6th May snooze-fest. And strictly neutral I shall remain, showing neither favour nor opposition toward any declared candidate.

However, living as I do in a key marginal seat – a straight fight between a cabinet minister who my charming wife once accidentally insulted, and a man with a quadruple-barrelled surname whose grandfather once tried to destroy humanity using nerve gas, stolen space shuttles and a secret space station, thwarted only by Roger Moore's left eyebrow – I fully expect my doorbell to be rung into oblivion by visiting ministers and their opposition shadows vying for my vote.

And like the 2005 poll, I shall be inviting them in for a nice cup of tea, locking them in the cupboard under the stairs, and see how long they'll last before resorting to cannibalism.

To be perfectly honest, my record from 2005 isn't going to be that hard to beat – I only managed to nab Tessa Jowell, who seemed to rather enjoy her incarceration, using her experience as Culture Minister to put my DVD collection into alphabetical order, and seemed quite sad to have to go back to the real world.

*Ding dong!*

"Greetings, fellow indigenous British citizen, I represent the British Nationa..."

Friday, April 09, 2010

The morbidly obese woman in the box office looks at me accusingly: "Are you over fourteen?" she asks.

"Yes. Yes I am," I reply confidently, this being my first AA Certificate movie, and I had the paperwork to back up my claim.

"Prove it!" the man-mountain of a doorman barks at me as my friends cower in terror.

I unfold my birth certificate and hand the precious piece of paper to the uniformed guardian of the silver screen, whose lips move as he takes in my details.

"Mmmm... Young Mr Scary Duck. That's an unusual name, isn't it?"

"No it's not. Loads of people have two middle names."

"Cut your cheek. You're in."

YES!

And the next one, please...

"One for Life of Brian."

"Are you over fourteen?"

"Yes. Yes I am. In fact, it's my birthday today, and this is my birthday outing."

"Prove it!"

Poor Steven, for his "I am 14" lapel badge cut no ice with the Door Nazi, and our gang is on the horns of a dilemma.

Five of us are clutching tickets and are eyeing up the girl behind the popcorn counter. Steve - whose day out this is - finds himself alone in the foyer, his dreams of cinematic blasphemy hanging by a thread.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

One thing led to another, and I found myself at the mercy of a five-day training course.

Naturally, you use your time constructively, and you take in what you are supposed to. But before long, the boredom sets in, and you are not allowed to kill your fellow delegates TO DEATH, just for the hell of it, even if you try to disguise it as a team-building exercise.

What to do?

I find a few little tactics get you over the worse of the sociopathic urges and back into the happy learning zone:

- See how many Training Department pens you can smuggle back to your desk on the first day

- On subsequent sessions, try to beat that record

- On Friday, just as the training department are beginning to despair at going 3,400 per cent over their stationery budget, return them all at once without getting caught

- Extra points if they are glued together into a 1:144 scale model of HMS Belfast, with working guns that fire Argos pens and/or Ikea pencils

Monday, April 05, 2010

And when the worst comes to the worst, and society crumbles around us, we're all going to have to eat our pets.

That'll serve them right for being made out of tasty, tasty meat.

Now – I know what you're thinking, and you're all a little bit squeamish about the idea. And frankly, I don't blame you. Nobody in their right mind is going to feel good noshing down on Mr Snuggles, so I've thought up a few recipes for you.

So, when you're broke and driven to the brink of insanity with hunger, don't come crawling to me because you've no idea whether to have red or white wine with braised cat lungs.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

1. They ramped the Large Hadron Collider* up to Seven Trillion electron Volts and took it for a test run round the block

2. At exactly the same moment the entire county of Dorset was plunged into a power cut that caused literally minutes of minor inconvenience.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT. And I have the evidence from my Twitter stream to prove it

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, my relveation was second lead story in the Bournemouth Echo - where poor, dead Bill Bryson started his career, and would be spinning in his grave if he were actually poor and dead.

Of course, it's all celebrations now. But just you wait until a bunch of Daleks pour out of a fissure in the space/time continuum - it'll be all fun and games until someone loses an eye, I can tell you for nothing.

* Not to be confused with the Large Hardon Collider, which can have a grown man hospitalised**

** Or something from the Harry Potter books: "And this," said Dumbledore, whipping off the dustcloth, "Is what we call the Large Hagrid Collider". Hermione's joy was unbounded

Friday, April 02, 2010

"Now, pay attention 007. If you want to defeat this Drax character, you're going to need some of this rather special equipment we've dreamt up in Q Division."

"It had better be good, Q. Drax will stop at nothing in his quest for world domination and it's going to be a tough job finishing him off."

"Speaking of jobs, 007, we've got just the thing for you. Hang on a second..."

"What ARE you doing, Q? Why, in the name of God are you dropping your trousers?"

"...NNnnnnnng..."

"Is... is that what I think it is?"

"Yes... Nnnnnng... Yes it is, Bond. NNnnnnng... Done."

"And what the Dickens...?"

"...do we expect you to do with it? DO keep up, 007, it's very simple. You wait until you're close quarters with the enemy, and you release it from its airtight compartment in your left shoe."

"And it explodes?"

"No, 007, it does not explode."

"Then... what?"

"Simple. While the cur's stamping about trying to find out who's done a jobbie in his secret hideout, you hit him with your secret weapon."

"Ah good, I wondered when you were getting round to that."

"Please stop interrupting Bond, I've got a hot date with Moneypenny and she'll be withered away to nothing by the time I get there. As I was saying, when Drax is diverted by the Secret Turd, you hit him with the secret weapon."

"And how do I detonate it?"

"Manually, 007, manually. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"You mean to say that I shoot my load into his eye, he wheels away in shock and disgust, falling into the rotating blades of his own over-complicated death machine, thus saving both the world and British interests in the face of lurid Russian expansionism."

As the Borough of Weymouth and Portland is to host the Olympic sailing events, I am disappointed to learn that the construction of my proposed 300-foot twin statues of the sisters Minogue - standing athwart the harbour entrance, their tanned, naked bodies embodying the very best of Athenian sporting prowess – are not to go ahead.

Instead, we are to get an inflatable rubber Lord Coe on the beach, which is hardly what anyone in their correct state of mind would call an Olympic legacy; especially as his tanned, naked body will be doing nothing but putting our expected international visitors off their fish and chips.

With less than two years to go until the games, it is not too late to provide some sort of permanent erection that will put Weymouth on the map and bring a smile to the face of visitors even after the Olympic circus moves on.

Of course, a 500 foot effigy of local celebrity Martin Clunes built entirely out of recycled materials isn't going to build itself, but the thought that we are contructing perhaps the only giant Clunes head that can be seen from the International Space Station will spur us on in this most important of tasks.

When finished, we can park the Clunes behind Portland and wheel it out on special occasions, such as the annual choosing of the Carnival Queen, and the subsequent sacrifice of last year's Carnival Queen to ensure fertility, fine crops and slightly warmer than average weather, of which we do not speak.

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